When did it begin? How did it happen? And why...oh why have we let it get this far?
Everywhere. Automatons. Not robots, not exactly. not yet. But just now, just over there, someone is within their own body operating on automatic. They have ceased questioning. They have given away their power of self rule. They have done this willingly, gladly even.
It's prevalent. It's growing by generation. All it took was the propaganda machine learning that comfort provides its own opiate.
First thing to do was to make everyone dress the same. One would think this would have been a hard fought battle for the hearts and minds of America. It wasn't. It was as easy as worn jeans and a T-shirt (boasting a graphic of some kind). Maybe a sports team. Sneakers. No need to push anything but comfort, ease, and the fairy tale of affordability. People did want other clothes for work. This provided an opportunity to offer other, more comfortable choices of work wear. Polo shirts, perhaps. Maybe with something stitched over the breast. All anyone needed to do after that took hold, was let the market close out the more stylish and individualistic clothes designs, or at the very least push them out of the affordability range of 98% of Americans.
The beauty of it all is that now, people will pay for shirts that actively advertise the seller's company. Even this may be acceptable if the quality of the clothes warranted recognition. But it doesn't. They are all the same, made by the same small distant hands working in the same squalid conditions using the same inexpensive materials.
This American "uniform" was sold on the idea of comfort, and non-conformity. But these days, non-conformity in America demands something different. This has led to a search for non-conforming physical self-expression. Tattoos, piercings, even spacers in the ear lobe - things once considered worthy of a side show attraction have taken root, and are moving into the American mainstream. So now, even this level of self-mutilation - nose and lip piercings, eyebrows, belly buttons, even tongues are pierced and no one bats an eye. This is all well and good as far as inclusion. But it pushes kids, teenagers especially, farther and farther in the hormonal search for identity that comes with puberty.
Those of us around them, we, the "village" who have been charged with raising these kids, with guiding them into an adulthood that requires their individuality and confidence, we look at them and we shake our heads because we don't understand why they don't just throw on jeans and a Dodgers shirt and chill. "Everyone just wants to live comfortably," we say. "Calm down," we say. "Everything will be all right." "Don't stress yourself out so much..." Or, "I can't handle this."
And the kids learn that yes, everything will, indeed, be all right, because there is food (sometimes), and although it's not the most comfortable place in the world, it's better than sleeping outside (sometimes).
And to make it easier on everyone, let's just understand that people make mistakes, and that bad things happen, and that the bureaucracy screws up and is slow to recover (and might never recover from its mistake), we we should just accept it because 'people are trying their best' (when they're not). We accept it. We allow it. Because maybe it will be faster if everyone just shuts up and let's the problem work itself out.
We have given up our right to be angry when things don't go our way.
The worst thing, worst, by far, is that we now somehow feel the need to stop other people from being angry. As if their anger were a matter of self-endulgence, and they should do as the rest of us do and swallow it, and not say anything, and not make a scene. Because if a scene is made, the cops will be called. We might even call the cops ourselves to stop someone from voicing their anger.
We silence their rage. But such rage cannot be silenced, only swallowed. The release valve of the outward expressions of our anger have all been legislated out of bounds. Men with guns, zip ties, hand cuffs, tasers, batons, and the power to inflict financial damage show up to quell the revolt against quiet acceptance of ineptitude, vice, criminal intent, and thievery. All of this, we are told, we must bear with great stoicism, so as not to upset the balanced calm that has been achieved.
We do these things to each other not because we are malicious. No. Far from it. We have "everybody's interest at heart". Mostly, we do it because we simply don't want our own anger to well up to the surface. Our anger is dangerous, and therefore, it must be kept in check.
And so the cycle continues. Until people explode, and do terrible things.
No one knows why these people snap. Yet snap they do, and more and more of them, too. These people, for whom the hard shell of automatonation is just too heavy. They snap. And we call them monsters.
They are, of course, monsters.
The problem is that we don't recognize how we made them.
All we wanted to do was to be comfortable, and to make them comfortable as well.
Some people just don't want to be robots.
What are you wearing, now?
